INCREASE YOUR WORKOUT INTENSITY
Last Saturday I showed up at the gym at 5:30 PM. They're normally open until 8:00 PM on Saturdays but the guy at the counter informed me that the new management changed it to 6:00 PM for the summer. I only had 30 minutes to work chest and back.
At first I thought about just blowing off the whole workout but couldn't since I was supposed to work chest & back the day before. I couldn't blow it off twice in a row. I just determined to work quickly and try to get in 5 to 6 sets for both chest and back before the gym closed.
After a couple minutes warm up I grabbed a couple of 85 lb. dumbbells and did a slow controlled set of 8 reps of flat dumbbell bench presses. 3 second negative, 2 second positive. That felt pretty good, so I rested about 60 seconds and managed to squeeze out 5 reps with the same weight on the next set.
After only another 60 seconds rest, I decided that I wanted to do some higher rep sets. So I picked up a pair of 65 lb. dumbbells and lowered myself to the bench. All of a sudden those 65 lb. dumbbells felt almost as heavy as the 85's! I could only squeeze out 8 reps! What gives?
Still wanting to do at least 12 reps, I dropped down to the 55's, once again after only a 45 to 60 second rest. I could only squeeze out 8 reps with the 55's and they were feeling mighty heavy, too!
OK, this was getting ridiculous. I dropped down to 45's (normally a *warm up* weight!) and FINALLY was able to squeeze out a set of 12 reps but my chest was on fire during those last several reps. I was huffing and puffing like a steam engine!
On to my back workout:
Same thing! Resting only 45 to 60 seconds was fatiguing my muscles rather quickly and making me drop to lighter poundages to stay in the rep zones I wanted to be in.
See, I usually do heavy sets of 5 to 8 reps with a good 2 to 3 minutes rest in between. Cutting my rest times to 60 seconds or less drastically increased the intensity of my workout.
The next day I was more sore than I've been in a long time. Obviously I had imposed a stress that my body wasn't used to.
If you're going a little stale in your workouts, try reducing the rest between sets to 45 to 60 seconds and see what happens. You might be pleasntly surprised!
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